Music makes us happy – how many times …? Sometimes we use music to enhance our mood, to give us stamina for a workout. To enjoy the intellectual stimulation that active listening can give us. Sometimes it’s cathartic, giving a voice to our grief over a loss. But perhaps the most sublime experience comes when a piece of music gives us the ‘chills’: that delicious feeling that ripples up your spine and tickles you from the inside out?

PET study of 10 musicians experiencing ‘chills’. Blood &amp; Zatorre, PNAS , 2001: Musical excerpts produced few personal associations or memories. Chills are elicited by the same part of the music for each subject. 77% of trials elicited chills. Each subjects selection served as a control for another subject. Chills were correlated with increases in HR, EMG and RESP depth. OBJECTivE MEASURE OF pleasurable experience of music because it has a distinctive autonomic nervous system signature.

[ 11 C]raclopride binding potential (BP) decreases bilaterally in the caudate, putamen and Nacc during pleasurable vs neutral music listening, indicating increased dopamine release during pleasurable music. Changes in binding potential (BP) values plotted separately for each individual; note that the change was consistent for the majority of people at each site. MORE ENDOGENOUS DOPAMINE = FEWER D2 RECEPTORS OPEN FOR BP.

T he anticipation of an abstract reward can result in dopamine release in an anatomical pathway distinct from that associated with the peak pleasure itself PET results conjoined with the fMRI results to add temporal resolution. ( b ) Hemodynamic responses and dopamine activity were maximal in the caudate during anticipatory phases, but shifted more ventrally to Nucleus Accumbens during peak emotional responses. ( c ) increased activity during anticipation and decreased activity during peak emotional response for the caudate, but a continuous increase in activity in NAcc with a maximum during peak emotional responses. NAcc involved in the euphoric component of psychostimulants such as cocaine and is highly interconnected with limbic regions that mediate emotional responses, such as the amygdala, hippocampus, cingulate and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. In contrast, immediately before the climax of emotional responses there was evidence for relatively greater dopamine activity in the caudate. This subregion of the striatum is interconnected with sensory, motor and associative regions of the brain and has been typically implicated in learning of stimulus-response associations and in mediating the reinforcing qualities of rewarding stimuli such as food.

The number of chills reported was positively correlated with percent binding potential change in the caudate, which was linked to BOLD response immediately preceding chills. The mean intensity of chills and reported pleasure were positively correlated with the NAcc, which was linked to BOLD response during chills. Nacc has been implicated in the euphoric component of psychostimulants such as cocaine and is highly interconnected with limbic regions that mediate emotional responses, such as the amygdala, hippocampus, cingulate and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. In contrast, immediately before the climax of emotional responses there was evidence for relatively greater dopamine activity in the caudate. This subregion of the striatum is interconnected with sensory, motor and associative regions of the brain and has been typically implicated in learning of stimulus-response associations and in mediating the reinforcing qualities of rewarding stimuli such as food.

But which pieces elicit the chills vary from individual to individual. What accounts for this variance? Taste is influenced by prior experience with music – sweet spot of complexity. Inverted U-shaped curve.

experience with that type of music leads to the recruitment of more pleasure centers

we ‘feel’ the expressed emotion bypasses DLPFC and our ‘executive’ replicated in non-musicians by Gazzola et al in Current Biology

Conclusions: performance matters – relates to dancing/breathing/movement – so that we empathize with the player. Traits selected for by sexual selection. Had physical fitness, rhythm, and the time necessary to devote to an unnecessary activity (ie Peacock feather).

Human mirror neuron system interacting with the limbic system via the insula: listeners ‘feel’ the emotion that the performer is expressing, through motion.